When author Stewart Brand coined the expression "Information wants to be free," he focused on how technology makes it cheap and easy to communicate and share knowledge. But the rest of his quote is rarely noticed.

ReadWriteWeb and New Scientist picked up on a preliminary piece of research that suggests better retention and learning is achieved through using an audio podcast of a lecture than actually attending it.
This says, "Information also wants to be expensive." The right information in today's complex economy and society can make a huge difference in our professional and personal lives. Not having this information can also make a big difference, especially if someone else does have it. And for valuable information, online is a great new way for it to be valued.

3D Training, Learning and Collaboration (3D TLC) conference taking place April 20-21, 2009 in Washington, DC, is the leading event for businesses seeking to understand and maximize business strategies using virtual worlds. 3D virtual worlds have broad implications for business not the least of which is cost savings and energy conservation. Attendees will hear valuable insight, information, and best practices about what innovators and early adopter organizations are doing right now, including what works and why. Our first announced keynote is Joe Little, Chief Technology Office, BP Group. BP has chosen Virtual Worlds as the game changing technology for (2008/9). Joe will discuss how the decision to focus on Virtual Worlds came about, what business issues are being addressed via the technology, what challenges he has faced in implementing solutions and what results he has seen from early pilots.

2.22.2009

In software applications, photography in most cases is used as content element, since photos express situations of human life very well and thus are well suited to capture and represent a certain message. The images have a semantic meaning, communicating information to the viewer and user of the respective web or software application. However, photography in interactive media is often a trigger for engagement and interaction. Interaction designers working on the product's interaction flows can thus provide visual designers with key information to select and apply visual elements, in order to start the conversation, and keep it alive.

Visual Memory and Sentences - Science Daily

But how does the language brain act so fast? Recent findings suggest that, as we read or have a conversation, our brains are continuously trying to predict upcoming information. Van Berkum suggests that this anticipation is a combination of a detailed analysis about what has been said before with taking 'quick-and-dirty' shortcuts to figure out what, most likely, the next bit of information will be.

Another interesting thing was that if subjects were remembering orientation, then that pattern of activity during the delay period had no information about color, even though they were staring at a colored-oriented stimulus," said Edward Awh, a UO professor of psychology. "Likewise, if they chose to remember color we were able to decode which color they remembered, but orientation information was completely missing.

This voluntary control in memory selection, Awh said, falls in line with previous research, including that done by Awh and co-author Edward K. Vogel, also of the UO, that there is limited capacity for what can be stored at one time. People choose what is important and relevant to them.

The principles of information architecture are exactly what you need to create usable audio. Your approach to creating audio should be similar to developing a large website. In both scenarios you don't want the user to get lost or overwhelmed by content. For any informational audio that is longer than a few minutes, follow these guidelines:

2.17.2009

If you scrutinize your performance too much-trying to control, for example, the natural inflections in your voice as you present an important finding to your office mates - you will be priming your cerebral cortex to trip over your cerebellum, leaving yourself at a loss for words. But if you focus on a single word or idea that sums up your entire presentation ("smooth" or "forceful," for instance), you will be best equipped to prevent your brain from getting in its own way.

Market researcher ComScore reported that LinkedIn's unique visitors rose to 7.7 million, a 22 percent increase over December, TechCrunch reported Saturday. And not only are more people visiting LinkedIn, but they're hanging around longer as well. Total minutes spent on the site last month more than doubled from December to 96.8 million, according to TechCrunch.

Many Twitter users embrace the technology as a way of feeling "ambient intimacy, just as people share the details of their lives with those far away via the telephone, email and blogging. "What's new about it is the ability to communicate with so many people at once. What's not new about it is you can create niche audiences just like we've been able to with blogs, with listserves back in the day. Twitter and status updating in general is another link in the chain of what we've been seeing the last 10 years.

2.10.2009

Over the years, we have consistently found strong evidence that training expenditures are a predictor of future stock market returns for publicly-traded companies. (See, for example, "How's Your Return on People?", Harvard Business Review, March 2004.)

Note that McBassi found in the original study that a series of portfolios of firms that made the largest per capita investments in training subsequently returned 16.3% per year, compared with 10.7% for the S&P 500 index. As to causality, McBassi noted, ""While the performance controls in the regression above should prevent a spurious correlation between training and stock returns, we also show that training expenditures are not driven by past returns. This supports the thesis that training investments help to determine stock price performance, and not the opposite."

Following the financial cataclysm of 2008, we explored how well the relationship between training investments and stock market performance had held up. Did the relationship still exist or had it even vanished entirely, swamped by larger forces at play in the financial world? The Answer? Yes, the relationship still exists.

If a recession does not mean an end to staff development, it does mean changes. Hyde Housing has begun to bring more training and education in-house rather than use outside contractors. Olsen-Haveland is moving Hyde towards what she calls the 70/20/10 model in which 70% of learning takes place on the job, 20% in coaching and 10% in the classroom or through e-learning.

Results indicate that aging adults may be able to make better-informed decisions about ways to improve memory. "Brain processing speed slows as we age," says Dr. Smith. "The study indicates that choosing a memory-enhancing approach that focuses on improving brain processing speed and accuracy, rather than memory retention, may be helpful."

I've gone off before about slow learning, and I think this is another facet. Not only are we're rushing too much in our performance, our development processes, and the amount of time we devote to learning, we're not properly setting the stage. I've been quick myself, but some of the best speakers seem to take their time getting to the point.

Few companies have dropped programs completely, but many are delaying custom program enrollment by six months or so as they watch expenses. But leadership coaches say they're still in demand. Author and consultant Paul Hellman has been expecting a slowdown, but says December was his busiest December ever. Mr. Hellman, president of Express Potential, says employers know employees are less likely to jump ship during the recession, and are exhibiting a "let's make sure people are developed" mentality. He says he sees companies cutting costs by using more Web training than in past years.

2.08.2009

Twitter had its origins a few years ago at a company called Odeo, a Silicon Valley startup that focused on podcasting. You could use Odeo to find podcasts; you could use it to listen to podcasts; and you could use it to make podcasts. Unfortunately for Odeo, two things happened. First, podcasting didn't take off as much as some had hoped; it was then (and remains) a niche interest. And second, in 2005, the biggest player in digital audio - Apple - added podcasting support to iTunes, which was already installed on the computers of every single human being who knew what a "podcast" was. So things were not looking good for Odeo.

So what was Odeo's response?

Our board was not feeling optimistic, and we were forced to reinvent ourselves.

Note: "Reinvent ourselves." Not: "Cut back on our staff a bit more every few months and hope the current business model can survive." Not: "Maintain a belief that we had a good product, damn it, a valuable product, and there will always be someone who wants it." "Reinvent ourselves."

Learning Styles

Discussion on 'Learning Styles" via TRDEV-L. The original post is here, while my response is here. All of the posts on learning styles can be found here.

Note that I belive anyone can read the messages in that you do not have to be a subscriber. If the site blocks you, please let me know.

Elements feels like a cross between Flickr's interestingness, Twitter's follow features and Tumblr's content submission, with a focus on sharing inspirational content. Users can explore Elements' recommended content, tell the system that they "like" items in order to view similar content, follow other users, upload or clip images and quotes, and see which other members like the same stuff.

There is no word that this avatar has been re-created on many thousands of Kanegawa Wiis and is trouncing untold numbers of Roger Federer lookalikes. But it's lovely to think that such frivolous games are now being used in the serious cause of truth and justice on the Miin Streets of Kanegawa.

2.05.2009

Readers create vivid mental simulations of the sounds, sights, tastes and movements described in a textual narrative while simultaneously activating brain regions used to process similar experiences in real life.

Learning is more strongly influenced by individual teachers, for example, than any other factor, including class size and quality of the facilities. In various studies, the truly great teachers do things like giving good, individualized feedback while remaining sensitive and responding to interactions going on around them that might indicate needs of other students.

2.04.2009

Instructional design helps people learn. It does this by taking into account how people learn from different media. This is called the cognitive theory of multimedia learning. One of the key ideas of this theory is that we have separate channels for processing verbal material and visual material. Each channel is limited in the amount it can process.

Even strong speakers can undercut a whole presentation with multiple endings, or a few seconds of wobbly indecision at the end. Those last few seconds amount to the last important picture people remember of you.

Whenever you introduce a new slide, stop talking, turn to the screen and look at it. If the slide is animated, allow the animation to complete its full course of action. (For more about PowerPoint animation, please see my blog, "Animation and the Presenter.") During your pause, look at the image as if you have never seen it, giving your audience time to see it, because they most certainly never have. At that moment, you and your audience fall into lock step.

Presentations and reports are ways of communicating ideas and information to a group. But unlike a report, a presentation carries the speaker's personality better and allows immediate interaction between all the participants.

2.02.2009

Digital wisdom is a twofold concept, referring both to wisdom arising from the use of digital technology to access cognitive power beyond our innate capacity and to wisdom in the prudent use of technology to enhance our capabilities.

We've ended up with 78 minutes of what could be argued is elearning content for doctors. Total production time? 11.9 hours. Run the math and it comes to 9.15 hours' development time per hour of finished 'seat time,' roughly 9:1. Compare this to high production value, interactive elearning, which generally takes 200-300 hours per hour (200:1 to 300:1).

The trouble is that the doctors each spent (in my estimate) 5-10 hours apiece preparing their slides and narrations.

One strand of massive connectionism is currently called social media. The other strand of massive connectionism relies on a massive number of machines. This new territory can best be illustrated by the far-right top extreme where both sides meet in the center - the area where we have maximum machine connection and maximum human connection. This overlap or convergence space would be the emerging global superorganism.